Woohoo!
Piecewise is pretty awesome.
And now... It's feeding time. Feeding on those sweet sweet memories and skills.
First we should make sure nobody is watching. Then we should help Piecewise hide the bodies. Then we should feed.
Make sure we're not consumed by their memories, stop if it gets overwhelming.
Then reanimate them and give control to a ghost that looks capable enough to move their body. No sense wasting good bodies.
+1
+1
+1
No burying bodies, we still want those.
We are a necromancer, and there's nothing wrong with a little socially sanctioned murder so we can gather spare parts. :3
+1
We are going to use the bodies
+1
You slip out of the alley and immediately order Piecewise to move the bodies into the nearest alleyway. He grabs two by the collar, one in each hand, and drags them the into the shaded confines of an alley, with you and Esme carrying the last between you. As soon as you're out of immediate sight you order piecewise to busy himself cleaning up the scene as best as he can, hiding the blood at least for the moment. The skeleton leans down and yanks the metal spike out of the back of the dead man's head, wiping the blood and brain matter off on the man's coat before vanishing the blade up his shirt sleeve and walking out to deal with the scene. You watch him go for a moment and then turn to the bodies. Their connection to the anima is gone and their memories are flowing out of them, gathering in great clouds of images. The fish creatures from the anima are starting to swarm down, drawn by this chum of dying consciousness. You slap your hand down over the closest man's head and feel the memories flow into you.
Its different from when you killed the chicken, different from when Esme granted you memories of her own. Those were a shallow pool and a carefully regulated shower, but this is a fire hose. Something like 25 years of memory condensed down into a few dozen seconds. Its far too much for you to consciously comprehend, too much to parse into anything but a vivid blur of sensation and imagery. You don't even know how long it lasts, the conceptions of time from those memories shatter your own and you feel like years and seconds are passing in the same span. Its too much, too much too fast, you just can't understand, you can't see it all.
It feels amazing.
And then it ends with a jolt and you are laying on the ground, grasping at the back of your head in confusion. You felt something hit you and then...No, that was Daniel, his death.
You blink.
Daniel?
You look at the body and you know him. You know him like you know yourself. You know his name, the name of his parents, the name of the dog he has at the little apartment he's renting above the bakery downtown. You know the mailman keeps delivering his letters to the man next door and that he was planning to see someone about it tomorrow. You know he was hungry. You know the smile of his baby brother, out in the farms hundreds of miles away. The creak of the farmhouse stairs. The sound of rattling pipes in the morning when he was young- the water heater was right next to his room. The smell of mud and blooms after the thunder storms. Family staring back at him. Money in envelopes, their names on them. Boots too tight. One more shift this week.
You rip yourself out of the cascading memories. Everything he knew, everything he was, is now in you. You feel it sitting there, abstract yet heavy. You pick up his rifle and check it. The slide is sticky about halfway through the motion, just like he remembered. You take the important things from his pockets: wallet, keys, extra magazines, identification badge. You hand them to Esme and then, somewhat in a daze, you move on to the next one.
*****
How much time has passed? Is it a day? A month? A year? You feel very old. You've lived nearly a century now, in other people's memories. It felt good every time and by the time you reached the third man...Isaac...you had accustomed yourself to holding back the tide of memories. You can pull them out a bit at a time now. Though there are still sometimes emotional implications bound to them that hit you unexpectedly, like cold water down your spine. You're sitting against the wall of the alley, staring up at slowly falling snow. Esme is standing over you, holding three rifles like someone might hold firewood. She isn't saying anything.
Piecewise steps back into the alley, clothing still wet from where he used snow to scrub the blood off his jacket. Oh thats right...its still tonight.
You ask Esme how long all this took.
"About 10 minutes I think." she says, though she doesn't check her watch.
You take a deep breath and stand up. If these bodies are gonna be reanimated they need a core. You need to choose what it will be and where you'll put it in the body. You still have the nails from before, along with the knife and the knives these men carried. Any of that would do. Should also probably disguise their injuries. The ones Piecewise stabbed in the brain or spike would be easy enough to hide with a hat and collar but the third one...he's a lot more bloody and obvious.
Author
Topic: The Left-Hand Path (Read 119394 times)